


as if I were made of stone

by AozoraNoShita



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ghosts, M/M, but possibly not, implied possible suicide, lots of death discussion because of the ghosts thing, mention of suicidal thoughts, which is why character death is tagged but uhhh he's already dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-08-20 08:34:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8243038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AozoraNoShita/pseuds/AozoraNoShita
Summary: John Laurens was sitting on a park bench, talking to himself, when someone actually answered. Someone alive.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [writelikeitsgoingoutofstyle (twoandahalfslytherins)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twoandahalfslytherins/gifts).



> this is not my idea, it's @writelikeitsgoingoutofstyle's, and I love it  
> this won't actually be that long, I'm not nearly as prolific as you, but I hope I did your idea some justice here

For someone stuck in time, John liked to think he was pretty good at keeping up with the passing of it. Some of the others were so stuck, so stubborn, they might as well be statues, and they were _incorporeal_. While they complained about the evolving language and fashion and values, the town changed, the country changed, the world changed. And maybe John was a stickler—no, too old a word—diehard? Newer, but _ha_. Diehard. Anyway, John was a diehard fan (still didn't sound quite right) of all the changes, and the others were sticklers for the old ways. The others who were still around, in any case. The old Revolutionary guys, some antebellum sailors, a few Victorian ladies and one 1920s gangster. The gangster was the youngest of all of them; there’d been a teenager in the 90s who’d hung around for a day before declaring themself ‘way too genre-savvy for this’ and promptly moving on. It probably meant something, that it was only the old generations who were still around.

 _Might as well be statues_ , he thought again, and snorted. The statue in front of him stared off into middle distance, heroically determined.

So, where was he? ( _Same place he always was_.) Right, changes. John had changed over the last century and a half. He could walk the walk and talk the talk (was that phrasing too old? Language changed particularly fast.), but that was assuming he had anyone to talk to, which he really didn’t. The others were kind of awful, which, okay, John may have been kind of awful, too, but he’d tried to change and the others hadn’t so really he should be in a completely different category than them.

“Hey gorgeous,” a girl called out to him before heading into the library.

“Hey,” he called back, even though strictly speaking she wasn’t talking to _him_.

Nobody did.

 

He was set up in his usual spot: his statue, his rock right beside it, his library right behind it, and his bench to the right of it. Doing pretty good for such a young fellow, old Revolutionary Ben Smith kept telling him. The guy was always complaining about the town being renamed in the 1880s. Originally it had been Smithville. John didn’t really like to talk to him; he challenged anyone who disagreed with him to duels, which, really? Those had been starting to get outdated by John’s time, even. It was 2016 now. For most people, at least.

So he was sitting on the bench, for lack of anything better to do.

Another kid went by into the library, probably a high school student, who muttered, “Hate that creepy-ass statue staring at me whenever I come here, damn.”

“Statue probably hates looking at your creepy ass,” John snapped, instinctive. After a moment he added, “Edgelord.”

No response from the kid, but _someone_ laughed. It was a nice laugh, so he looked around for the source, although he knew the laughter wasn’t for him. Except, when he spotted the person laughing, it was a guy, and he seemed to be looking right at him. Which didn’t happen a lot, except for when John stood directly in front of the statue when people looked at it (but it was hard, because the thing was just a little bit taller than he was, which, what the hell). He checked behind himself, but there was nothing funny behind the bench. Maybe he was reading the inscription _on_ the bench? Not that the ‘in memoriam’ thing was funny, but this guy couldn’t possibly be—

“Did you seriously just check behind you? And call someone an _edgelord_?” the guy asked him.

Asked him.

Asked _him_.

“Uh.”

“Edgelord, oh my god.”

“I’m...trying to keep up with, uh, current. Slang?” he tried.

This sent the stranger into another fit of giggles.

“Sorry, sorry. I’m Alex Hamilton.”

His immediate instinct was to lie about his name, but this situation was already so out of the ordinary he wasn’t sure what lying would actually accomplish. “...John Laurens.”

No reaction to the name. This guy couldn’t have been around for too long, if he didn’t recognize it. And John didn’t recognize _him_ , and uh, he would remember seeing someone so…

Hamilton smiled, crooked and sweet, and oh, wow. _Wow_. The only people John spoke to, the only ones who looked at him, did so with old words and dead eyes, and definitely no one smiled at him.

(Not a lot to smile about.)

And God, not to be cliche, but there was so much _life_ in Hamilton’s smile. Definitely alive.

John watched, baffled, as Hamilton held out a hand. A handshake, he realized, and looked down at his own hands. He knew what would happen if he tried to reach out, tried to touch. So he didn’t bother to try.

The sweet smile disappeared, but Hamilton’s expression was still genial and open as he put his hand down. John could guess what kind of conclusion he’d probably reached—John’s blue coat was pretty worn out, there were tears in places if you looked carefully. Just barely visible, there were smudges of dirt all up his arms and neck, though he’d just wiped his face clean of the accumulated grime before—

Oh, and there was blood under his fingernails.

“New here?” he asked, hoping the dishevelment and inability to perform a basic social nicety wouldn’t drive this strange phenomenon of a man away. Mostly hoping. Partly wishing. Not sure yet.

“Yep,” Hamilton agreed. “Just down here for the winter, doing a few weeks of an internship for my grad program. And you?”

“Old here.” Very old. “Born and raised, and now—now I’m back.”

Hamilton gave him a long once-over, and apparently the grunge wasn’t too off-putting because he grinned. “Wanna get a drink?”

Ha! If only.

“I can’t really…” He trailed off, because there were a lot of logistical problems with that offer.

“I’ll pay,” Hamilton offered easily. “Grant money, eyyy.”

John blinked, a reflex, unsure what to do.

“Know a good place?” the newcomer pushed, words forming warm clouds in the cold air.

John’s eyes lingered, fascinated. “It’s a small town, there’s really only the one place.”

“Well then. Lead the way.”

He hadn’t technically agreed. But. Well. _What’s the worst that could happen?_

So he stood up, and he led the way.

His breath didn’t fog the air. It never did. It never would.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *staggers in, throws this down, staggers back out*

The bar was Irish-themed, complete with shamrock stickers in the windows and tinny fiddle music playing on old-fashioned speakers. It really was the only place in town though, and the locals loyally defended the slight cheesiness to outsiders—not that there were too many of them. John wondered briefly if the fact that Hamilton wasn’t _from_ this place had anything to do with his ability to see him. But people had come through before, and never seen him. Spoken to him.

Invited him for drinks.

John had hesitated at the door of the place, muttered, “It’s...been a long time since I've been in here,” at Hamilton’s questioning look (a very long time—it used to be a tailor shop). He’d been steered towards a small table outside, and he watched through the window as Hamilton ducked in and approached the bar. It was six o’clock but it was also a weekday; only the regular-regulars were inside for now. He saw Mulligan behind the bar perk up, probably at the sight of a new face in town. John liked Mulligan, he would come out sometimes and sing ballads in a low, gravelly voice while he wiped down the windows and tables. Some of the songs John even knew.

Mulligan kept with other Irish traditions, as well. Iron horseshoes nailed over the doors had prevented John from ever actually entering the bar. A bit of kitsch, maybe, but there was something to be said for the power of belief.

“Kitsch,” he said aloud, sounding the word out. He hadn’t had a chance to use it before, though he’d learned it in the 1950s. “Kitsch. Kitsch.”

“Is that a comment on the decor?” Hamilton interrupted his monologue-of-sorts, which, _new and exciting_.

“Well,” John started, and just the one word was so defensive—because he _was_ a local, had been for a long time—that Hamilton held up the two beers he had in his hands, placating.

“Alright, dude, chill. It’s _nice_ kitsch.”

At John’s sheepish grin, he set the glass down in front of him, dark and foaming, not quite spilling over. It looked good. John wished he could smell it, or taste it, or even feel the liquid on his tongue.

Hamilton noticed his hesitation. Smiled. “Seriously, it’s on me. No worries.”

John attempted an answering smile and wrapped his hands around the glass, or at least it would look that way to Hamilton. He imagined the glass would be cool and smooth and a little slippery under his fingers. He felt that sudden, visceral longing for the ability to actually _feel_ things, but even that was just a muted form of the real, living emotion. Being able to remember an emotion, but not truly feel it, was—suffocating, maybe? Although what did that mean, to someone who didn't breathe?

He sighed. There were some abilities that came with being not-alive: he couldn’t actually pick the glass up, or touch it, but a simple illusion, a manipulation of shadows, and he could at least make it seem like the cup was draining. He just had to do it in increments, when Hamilton wasn’t paying too close attention to the fact that John wasn’t actually raising the glass to his lips.

Something that Hamilton had no problems doing, draining half his glass in one pull. John took the opportunity to disappear some of his own beer.

Hamilton was smiling when he resurfaced, with a little smidge of foam caught in his facial hair. John felt a weird tug of not-quite-emotion. That was new and exciting, too.

Hamilton plunked his glass down next to John’s. The juxtaposition made it obvious just how much Hamilton had managed to swig in one go. “Not into stouts?” Hamilton asked, grinning.

“Never drank much else besides lager and ciders,” John recalled, thinking fondly of his favorite sutler down in South Carolina. The cider he’d sold had been amazing.

Hamilton cocked his head but didn’t ask about his usage of the past tense. John stared back at him. He’d gained a lot of experience people-watching, and there was possibly something about being not-alive that lent itself to intuiting things about the living. He got the sense Hamilton was holding back, not just words but also emotions, his full _self_. He was restrained, was restraining himself, was _being_ restrained, by—

Hamilton jerked back in his seat, breaking the spell. He was blinking rapidly, looking a little dazed.

...That had never happened before, either.

John, not knowing what else to do, ‘emptied’ his glass. Hamilton didn’t seem to notice.

“So, uh, why are you in town again?”

Hamilton shook his head, shook off the confusion of whatever it was John had just done. “Um. Grad school. Internship. Basically I’m going to be reorganizing the entire historic collections room at the library, in partnership with the local historic association.”

John winced. Hamilton caught it.

“Yeah, all my professors have warned me that working with local organizations can sometimes be a bit of a pain. Like, the smaller the town the more defensive they are with their stuff. Which is cool, but uh, the guy I met with today actually called me a carpetbagger? To my face.”

Oh, John remembered those. They had cropped up right after he—came home.

“At least they’re paying you for it,” John offered. “You did say they were paying you, right?”

“Well the historic society sure as hell isn’t paying me. I actually got a grant—which, holy shit, doesn’t usually happen in the _history_ field—after I wrote this essay on preserving local history, and one of the guys on my advisory board is from this area so I ended up here somehow. I mean, I love New York, that’s _my city_ , but it’s so big and they’ve got historic preservation on their minds but then there’s, there’s small towns, like this one, and you can spend your whole life learning about its history and still not know everything! The families who came here, and why, and how they lived, and how wars and economics affected them, you can get down to this level of _minutiae_ which is just _amazing_.”  Hamilton had to put his beer down; he was gesturing expansively. His eyes were lit up—that’s what passion looks like, John remembered—as he declared, “There’s so much to _know_.”

“Even about this tiny place?” John asked, actually a little bit enthralled. With the idea, and with Hamilton.

“Yes! There have been people here for hundreds of years, native peoples and settlers and enslaved people and immigrants, and they all had stories. Maybe not the kind that get biographies written about them, but they were here and their stories should be kept _somehow_. Someone will care about them.” He stopped abruptly, flushed, and gulped down some of his drink. “Even if it’s only old cranky librarians who call people carpetbaggers.”

It was pretty easy to keep Hamilton talking about his work—not so easy to get him to talk about himself, which was fine since John was avoiding his own life—and death—story.

“I’ll see you again, right?” Hamilton asked when he stood to leave.

Hopefully. “I hang out by the library a lot,” John not-quite-answered.

Hamilton’s smile twitched. He was definitely assuming John was homeless. “Then I’ll see you,” he said firmly. Waved, took off towards the inn down near the waterfront.

John watched him go. Mulligan came out after a few minutes to stare down at the two glasses: one empty, one full. John wondered if he’d been watching Hamilton talk to himself through the window. On a whim he stood and waved his hand in front of Mulligan’s face. No reaction, but what had he expected? He’d been dead for one hundred and fifty years, and no one living had ever seen him before.

Except for Alex Hamilton.

He sighed, or at least mimicked the action, and walked away. Might as well go wait by the library.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mmmm sutlers follow armies around and sell them things, carpetbaggers were northerners who came south after the civil war and often ended up being in charge of places bc they brought money with them and things were so torn up post-war (a lot of ((white)) southerners hated them for 'taking advantage' and voting with the pro-reconstruction republican party, arguably some of them were in it for the money/power so today the term basically means 'immoral opportunist')
> 
> and blue coat+150 years dead=john is a union soldier, how exactly this came about when they are in some anonymous small southern town will be addressed
> 
> I'm dead tired but !!!! I updated, hopefully everything I just typed makes sense and no typos THANK YOU for your kind kudos-ing and comment-ing and message-to-remind-me-to-update-ing (I need the prodding along)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the tone of the previous two chapters kind of got away from me so this chapter is uhh more research oriented?  
> which, if you like that kind of thing? great!  
> if you're not feeling it, you'll like the final chapter better

John had wandered away from his bench in the early hours of the morning, because dead though he may be, sitting in one spot for hours was still boring. Time was weird like that. A century and a half behind him, countless centuries to come in front of him, but at 3 AM he was still restless enough that he ended up in the parking lot of a seafood restaurant down near the waterfront. It happened to be across from the inn Hamilton was most likely staying at, and he definitely wasn’t going to stare up at the one still-illuminated window and wonder if this mysterious newcomer was the one tenant awake in there.

The others, the ones who bothered to move from the spot they'd died, tended to converge on city hall at night. The building was a historic mansion, and they'd wander the halls and act as though they were alive, without anyone actually alive and awake around to ruin the illusion. They didn't speak to each other.

There were a few who never left their haunting grounds. Two in particular near the waterfront. A young lady who'd died at sea strode up and down a short stretch of shore where her body had washed up two hundred years before. She was only lucid some of the time. Mostly she was confused about what had happened, why she was there—didn’t remember she was dead. John tried to talk to her whenever he was down here, but he was too distracted tonight. Not good company.

The other spirit at the waterfront usually frequented the inn. He’d also drowned off the coast, but he seemed to be aware he was dead. John didn’t know for sure because he didn’t talk now that he was deceased. John remembered him from when he’d been a patron at the inn—Anthony, the harpist who’d had all the ghosts in town crowding the halls to hear him play. The performances he’d given had always brought the living audience to a dead silence, but some of that may have been because of the dead, silent but present around them.

In any case, he was a good harpist. Had been.

But he didn’t make any kind of sound at all, now.  

The light in the window went out, whoever it was finally going to sleep.

“To sleep, perchance to dream,” John muttered to himself. Shook his head, changed directions. Maybe he’d go check on Theo.

“I am thy father’s spirit, doomed for a certain term to walk the night…”

 

Hamilton was waiting for him on the bench.

“It’s five in the morning,” John told him. “Why are you up?”

‘Since I’m fairly certain you didn’t go to sleep until 2,’ he didn’t add, because standing under someone’s window for hours was creepy, even if—maybe _especially_ if—you were a ghost.

“Mm, the lady who owns the inn is nice and all, but if she caught me before I left I’d probably be subjected to another hour of ghost stories,” Hamilton said absent-mindedly, scribbling into a notebook on one knee while he turned the pages of a book on the bench beside him.

John, who’d been consciously making his chest appear to rise and fall in the motions of breathing, froze for a moment. “Not a big fan of ghost stories?” he asked after a moment.

“Well, historically they’re interesting.” Hamilton looked up and pointed his pen at him. “But they’re rarely well-sourced, and by nature they change a lot over time until no one even knows where the story came from anymore. For example, the one the kindly innkeeper was telling me yesterday: something about some guy who played the harp at the inn back in the late 1800s. Apparently this guy was named Anthony, though she consistently referred to him as _Tony_ , and now he haunts the place by playing the harp at odd times and closing windows before there’s a storm, which is nice of him, I guess? Anyway. A quick Google search—”

Google was a verb for looking things up on the Internet, John was pretty sure.

“—tells me that the guy was Italian; his name was Antonio and he moved here to find work as a musician. Differing accounts on whether or not he had a family here—he was nineteen!— and where exactly he set sail from, what caused the accident. It sounds like an interesting history, but now it’s been reduced down into a ghost story with only the bare bones, and a lot of the sources about _Antonio_ seem to have been influenced by the stories about _Tony_ , so who knows what’s true? Everyone seems to agree he’s buried in the cemetery here, though, so I thought I might check that out.”

John didn’t have to make himself shiver this time. Hamilton caught the reaction and raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t like the cemetery,” John said. Too morbid, for a dead person.

“O-kaay. Anyway, it’s a good story, and there are references to it in a lot of the documents I’ve been going through, apparently the story’s been around for a while. Oh!” He patted the bench; John sat. “I wanted to ask you! So, I’ve been doing some preliminary reading since I have no background on this place, and I was wondering, are you a part of the same Laurens family the town is named after?”

 _Ha_.

He attempted a smile. “I did say I was old in town, right?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t realize that old!” Hamilton looked genuinely excited to hear this. “From what I gathered, I thought they all moved out west and there weren’t any Laurens—Laurenses?—left in town.”

“Just me.”

Hamilton finally seemed to catch on to his discomfort. “Should I...not be talking about this? Sorry, I get overexcited about things sometimes, you can tell me to shut up.”

“Yet somehow I get the impression you don’t usually just, ah, ‘shut up’ when people ask.”

“Well, no, but I might for you.” And he _winked_.

Someone with blood, someone with veins, someone with a body that reacted to their emotions, probably would have blushed. As it was, John just faked a cough, and looked away, though he was sure he probably had an embarrassing expression on his face.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Hamilton said pointedly. “I know I just said I’d shut up, but —”

“That didn’t last long.”

“Man, _you_ shut up, I wanna ask you a few things. _If_ you don’t mind.”

He debated it for all of five seconds, but. This was still so new, and he wanted to see what happened. It wasn’t really a difficult choice.

“I’m not sure how much help I can be, but go ahead.”

“Great! Okay, so—oh, and thank you! Right, questions. Hm.” He started leafing through his notebook rapidly. “Just confirm this for me, will you? So, the Laurens family was originally French, came to America in the...late 18th century?”

“Yes,” John said, carefully, “my I-don’t-know-how-many-greats great-grandfather went to England and then Ireland.” (It was actually just the one great.) “Then he came to New York before he went south. For a while our surname was spelled the French way, Laurent.”

“ _Cool_ ,” Hamilton breathed. “Do you know a lot of the family history?”

John shrugged. “Not so much. My—the first Laurens to live here burned a lot of the old papers, the things that talked about ancestry and titles, saying they were irrelevant to our family in America. Apparently we had quite a few relatives already in New York, though. All with different spellings of the last name. Lawrence, like the river. Laurence with a ‘c-e’ on the end, even. A few of them were close enough to past noble lineage that they considered working a trade to be beneath them. Died poor but proud. The Laurens who came down south started out in the saddlery business.”

Hamilton was actually taking notes. John trailed off and watched him until the young historian looked back up.

“And?”

John shrugged. “They stayed in the area until ‘round the turn of the century before heading west.”

“Except for your branch of the family, I guess.”

John hummed, which was taken as an affirmation.

“But they were doing pretty well for themselves down here, right? I mean, the town got renamed after them in…” He checked his notes. “In 1887.”

“Yeah, leading up to the War they were invested in a lot of different businesses, especially shipping from the port nearby, up the river. They owned a lot of the land here. Their financial support is part of the reason the town became more than just a fishing village.”

Hamilton made a face. “But speaking of the Civil War, I’d bet they were Confederate.”

“Yep. That’s where the money was.”

Hamilton scoffed.

“They officially stopped bringing new slaves into the country in 1808,” John continued. “But that was only officially. What ended up happening instead, the domestic trade grew. Exponentially. The northern slave states, especially Virginia, could make a lot of money selling slaves down here to the Carolinas, Georgia. So not only did my family own a plantation themselves, but they were involved in the sale of thousands of slaves in the trading house at the port.” He cut himself off. _This_ he remembered. His family prospering on the broken, scarred backs of others. He’d tried speaking out to others, trying to persuade his father the entire system was wrong, but when it came down to it, it wasn’t about right or wrong to his father, to the other wealthy families and politicians; it was about money.

And then, when the War came —

Well, he’d picked the Right side, even if he hadn’t lived to see the end.

“Typical,” Hamilton snorted. “And here I was thinking the name change was an improvement over _Smithville_. Y’know, the Smith this place was originally named after served as an aide-de-camp under Washington? Ended up being a state governor for a while, super involved in philanthropy projects, from what I’ve been reading, and then, what, a casual mention in _one_ book that he owned _two hundred and twenty one_ enslaved people! You can bet your ass _that_ doesn’t get mentioned on his Wiki page.”

 _Wick-e?_ Well, he understood the ‘page’ part, anyway.

Hamilton was still muttering about editing the wick-e when he stood up. “I’m gonna check out the graveyard,” he announced. “And then it’s back to the library for more research. But I’ll meet up with you later? We can get another drink.”

John was loathe to have Hamilton waste the money on a beer he wouldn’t actually be able to pick up. “The flotilla,” he remembered. At Hamilton’s questioning look, he elaborated: “There’s a boat parade tonight, down at the water. The sailboats are all strung up with lights. If you wanted to watch it. Together, I mean.”

Hamilton’s grin was dazzling. “Sounds good. I’ll meet you down there once I escape the library.” He made as if to clap John on the shoulder, remembered his aversion to touch at the last second, and turned it into an awkward wave. Grin slightly apologetic now, he turned and headed towards the graveyard.

John sat on his bench to watch him go.

He felt vaguely prickly, the way static electricity had sparked on his skin when he could still feel that sort of thing. The residual passion of a short lifetime calling for Abolition, briefly resurrected by their conversation, making its phantom presence known. That fight was over, but he wondered...if he was alive, would he still be fighting? Fighting for a cause, for a purpose, for the sake of a fight?

He’d like to think so.

But

he couldn’t really

remember how it  felt to—  

 

  
He wondered if Hamilton would visit his grave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the pain of being a public historian....the sources.....sources....please...
> 
> ACTUAL notes:  
> -The brief history of the Laurens family I gave here is true, except I bumped it up a century to fit John being in the Civil War rather than the Revolutionary. Great-grandfather Laurens left France in the late 17th century because they were Huguenots. Also since I changed the century the idea that the Laurens family made money “investing” is not quite accurate, Henry Laurens made a shit ton involved in the slave trade, running “the largest slave trading house in North America.”  
> -I’m totally being ambiguous about exactly where they are? It’s on the coast in one of the Carolinas, based on an actual location in North Carolina but we all know the Laurens(es?) were actually in the southern one. There is an actual Laurens, SC named after Henry but that’s not where this is taking place.  
> -Also! Both Theo and Anthony are actual NC ghost stories, and Benjamin Smith was a real person.
> 
> feel free to hmu about the history or the ghosts or trying to source freaking ghost stories in scholarly work


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm...  
> hmm

The weather was—well, it was something, though John couldn’t really speak to the temperature. He wasn’t entirely sure what the date was. He wanted to say it was cold, because the sun went down early and lit up the sky in blazing reds and purples, the way it only did in the winter as a way to make up for the lessened warmth of its rays. Anyway, the flotilla usually happened in the winter, a prelude to the upcoming Christmas celebrations.

Sure enough, Hamilton arrived bundled up with a ridiculous scarf just as the sun set but violet dusk still lingered. John had chosen a place on the beach, tucked back a bit in the marsh grass that hemmed in the south corner of the small strip of sand. It was far away enough from the other onlookers starting to arrive that they wouldn’t notice Hamilton seemingly talking to himself, he hoped. Hamilton, blithely unaware of the issue, flopped down right next to him and announced loudly that he was sick of being cooped up in the library all day, and it sure was pretty out, and did John know anything about that renegade John Laurens?

Well, did he?

“That’s my name,” he answered, trying desperately to think how he could straddle the line between telling the truth and not-lying.

“You’re named after him?”

“Uh—”

“That’s cool! I saw his grave at the cemetery with the other Laurens but noticed he didn’t have one of those little Confederate flag markers they put next to the graves of the veterans, even though he died in ‘65. And there were actual flowers on his grave, too!”

He wondered who’d done that.

“So I looked him up when I got to the library and he’s like, the _one_ guy in the family who fought for the Union. Like straight up ran away and told his family to fuck off. There were even some letters he wrote about abolition! I didn’t realize this town or the Laurens family had produced anyone so cool. No offense.”

“None taken.” He supposed he should be flattered, actually.

But he still didn’t really want to talk about this.

“Not sure how he ended up back in the graveyard _here_ but he died at Bentonville, which is in the same state at least but not that close? But god, _so_ close to the end of the war. Wasn’t even a huge battle, just...a dying gasp.”

John tried to picture what the sand felt like, if he could dig his fingers into it, if he could try and grasp it, if he could feel it falling through his fingers.

“Sorry, you probably don’t want to hear me ramble on about my history junk.”

He couldn’t quite bring himself to be polite and deny it.

Hamilton went right on, not noticing his hesitation.

“I’ll have to research him more. Anyway! What’s this flotilla thingy?”

“It’s really just sailboats, some motorboats, that go by like a parade strung up with electric lights.”

“Ha, as opposed to what, candles?”

Ha. _Electricity_ , though. It had never stopped being fascinating.

The natural light from the sun faded, and as soon as the last streak of red had left the sky, the boats arrived. They came near-silently up from the south, glowing brightly and forcing the darkness away from their parade route with shining green and blue and yellow. The first sailboat, mast rising nearly 50 feet above the water, was draped in strings of green lights that seemed to form the shape of a pine tree, all twinkling like stars. Other sailboats with similar lighting came behind it. Motorboats, moving slowly so as not to cause too much wake, came after that. They were a bit less elegant but more creative, using stiff wire to create sculptures of lights over their boats. Most were in the shape of fishes or sea birds, turtles or dolphins, and one had even rigged a grinning, sharp-toothed shark’s jaw at the bow. A lone shrimping boat came by, nets to the side but with a single lit-up sign that proudly proclaimed STAR WARS on the port side, which made Hamilton laugh. More boats, decorated with Christmas trees and reindeer and Santas, and how close were they to Christmas anyway?, floated up the water.

As each boat went by, people on the beach clapped and cheered their decorations. Someone had brought out a radio and started playing carols midway through the parade, old-fashioned ones that John actually recognized. Hamilton hummed along, but John couldn’t remember the last time he’d bothered to hum or whistle, much less sing, so he stayed quiet.

The line of boats turned and started to head back to the south, passing by for an encore that the crowd cheered enthusiastically. It was during this burst of noise that he just barely heard Hamilton say, “This is a good reminder of things to stay alive for.”

Which sounded like—

“What?”

“Hm? Oh, nothing.”

“No, I heard you. I mean. _What_?”

“Y’know. Good things in the world. Makes life worth living.” Hamilton waved a hand dismissively.

John shook his head. “Something that makes life worth living is different from something to stay alive for.”

Hamilton’s eyes were inscrutably black in the dark. And John remembered, abruptly clear in his memory, dark circles and unkempt hair and sickly pale skin—

No.

Was _this_ why he could see John?

Was this why he could see _John_?

Because he knew—he knew that tiredness, that apathy, and it was one thing when you were promised oblivion but now he was on the other side and there was nothing, but not nothing like oblivion but nothing like _something_ but as nothing stuck in something, with no way to move forwards or backwards or even sideways, and it with no end in sight.

Oblivion had been a lie.

The last of the flotilla lights faded away, and darkness returned.

The two of them sat in stilted silence as the other onlookers packed up and left. Hamilton started shivering after a while, but remained stubbornly quiet. John felt nothing, and he had all the time in the world.

He could wait.

“Look, this isn’t really making me want to talk about it,” Hamilton finally said.

No one had ever talked to John about his lingering quiet. The quiet had always resisted attempts to speak of it, so he wasn’t sure what to say now to someone else’s.

“There’s so much you can do, alive,” he tried, helplessly, aware of how much it sounded like a useless platitude. But he didn’t know how to put into words, without giving away what he was, how good _possibility_ sounded compared to dead certainty.

Sure enough, Hamilton just huffed. “Coming from a homeless guy,” he muttered, which was rude but he looked cornered and defensive enough that John let it slide. “I mean. Sorry. But I really, really don’t want to talk about it, and I’ve really liked spending time with you, so can we drop it? Please?”

So they sat, frozen in time and indecision and hopelessness. But together.

  


He walked Hamilton back to the inn, watched him walk right by Anthony without seeing him.

  


The next day, he sat on his bench outside the library, and Hamilton greeted him mostly-cheerfully. He was already holding a stack of folders and papers, but he had a small crossword booklet on top.

“I love crosswords,” he admitted. “Words, man.”

John smiled. “You do have a lot of them.”

Hamilton laughed. “Yeah, well, I’m missing, uh...an eight-letter word starting with H that means ‘a fatal flaw that leads to tragic hero’s downfall.’ I was thinking it’s gotta be something along the lines of hubris, but that’s not long enough and there’s a T as the 6th letter.”

“Hamilton,” John said.

“Yeah?”

“...Hamartia,” he said instead.

Hamilton smiled, filled it in, and told him, “You should just call me Alex. I’ll meet you out here later?”

John just nodded, with the preternatural feeling that something was going to happen, and soon. There was a vague pressure at the back of his throat. He thought maybe it was unease.

 

 

Hamilton didn’t emerge from the library until it was closed. He stopped beside John’s bench, not looking at him, until the two librarians had walked away, chatting quietly together. They were alone when Hamilton said, “They told me the last of the Laurens family was dead.”

John stayed quiet. They both stared forward, towards the statue.

“I thought maybe they just, I don’t know, weren’t acknowledging some last descendant in the area, seeing as you were living on the streets, but, _you_ know, don’t you, John? The Civil War was the first to be so extensively photographed. And there was a picture—”

He paused.

“The town is named after John Laurens, technically. Some _carpetbagger_ mayor in the 1880s decided to rename the place after their one Union soldier. I think it only went through because, ha, the name Laurens could refer to any of the fucking Confederates from the family. But there are some things around town that say _John_ Laurens on them. And there’s a _picture_. A photo. I found it and…”

John looked over, staring at Hamilton’s profile. He was looking down at a copy of a picture in his hands—right, a photocopy, that’s what that was called—and his fingers were shaking slightly.

John remembered posing for that photograph. His blue coat had been in pristine condition back then, and he’d sat stock still for the long exposure time, worried that his hat was about to slide off his head from where he’d jammed it on over his curls.

“This is—” Hamilton started, but couldn’t finish. He turned, finally, suddenly, and dropped the picture to reach out.

John had been dead too long to expect anything different, so he didn’t anticipate the touch, didn’t even think to hope for it. So when it happened, just briefly, it nearly didn’t register. The lightest touch, the softest pressure, of fingers on his chin. He remembered viscerally, suddenly, pressing bright yellow dandelions under his chin as a child, and his sister— _oh God her name was Martha, he’d forgotten that—_ laughing and telling him the golden reflection on his skin meant he’d be rich when he grew up.

Just a moment. The feeling petal-soft and light on his face.

Then back to nothing.

He jerked his gaze up, because even though _this_ had been what he’d expected, he didn’t want to see it. Alex’s fingers curled up and through, into his jaw because he didn’t have a jaw there was nothing there, John wasn’t there to touch so how could those soft ( _were they soft, he was already forgetting_ ) fingertips do anything else but grasp at nothing in the air?

John was nothing, nothing except scattershot memories and not-quite-feelings, bound in place and out of time. And none of those things could be touched.

“What I said about reasons to stay alive,” Hamilton whispered, and John couldn't quite tell if it was horrified or reverent. “If there was ever a reason to die—”

John pulled away. “Don’t you dare say that,” he seethed, “Not to someone who died _for a cause_.”

“Did you?” Hamilton asked shrewdly. “At Bentonville, the reports said you recklessly endangered yourself for _no reason_ and—”

“It had to have been for _something_!” John shouted, standing up. He hadn’t shouted in over a century.

Hamilton just shook his head, though. “I gotta go.”

And he left, and he left, and he left the photocopy lying on the ground. John looked down at it. That was what he looked like, he knew, though he couldn’t remember the last time he’s seen his reflection. The photo showed him how he was, or rather how he had been. He had so many freckles on his face, he realized, remembered. You couldn’t see those on the statue, the stupid statue of himself that was just a little bit taller than him, the one that stood in front of the library named after him, the library that stood in the town that was named after him.

“It had to have been for something,” he said again, to the memory of that living version of himself in the photo.

  


The feeling of dread wouldn’t go away.  


 

He went to the graveyard. Someone had indeed left flowers at his grave, but there was no indication who they were from.

 

 

He had the feeling he needed to go back. Hamilton was pulling at him in a way nothing had or could have for — he checked the grave — one hundred and fifty-one years.

 

 

Surely Hamilton wouldn’t—?

  


_In memory of John Laurens_ , the plaque on his bench read. The second line had been partly scratched away, so now it read _Dulce  — — est  — — mori_ , which struck him as amusing sometimes, but not now.

  


Not now.

 

Because—

  


Alex was waiting for him on the bench.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if this makes sense, I haven't written in forever, this came out in a few hours  
> it IS the intended ending for this fic
> 
> you can always ask me about it here or on tumblr @aozoranoshita (where I rarely post but I get messages/asks)  
> also look up pictures of holiday flotillas they're so cute

**Author's Note:**

> I'm excited to be writing laurens again, I missed him  
> hmu on tumblr @aozoranoshita


End file.
